The damage being done by the boycott against Bud Light is becoming undeniable.
Now the financial community is starting to panic.
And Bud Light’s CEO was speechless after a major bank handed him this devastating news.
The damage done to Bud Light’s brand by partnering with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney is piling up with no end in sight.
A conservative-led boycott of the woke beer brand is causing sales to tank and is dealing a major hit to the bottom line of Anheuser-Busch InBev, Bud Light’s parent company.
Multinational bank HSBC dealt Anheuser-Busch InBev another major blow when analysts downgraded the company’s stock.
HSBC downgraded Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI) stock to hold status, which means investors shouldn’t buy or sell shares of the stock.
Carlos Laboy, managing director for the global beverage sector of HSBC, wrote in his analysis that Anheuser-Busch InBev botched the change of its brand.
“Is ABI’s leadership getting the brand culture transformation, right? It’s mixed,” Laboy wrote. “At Ambev, we think the answer is ‘yes;’ in the U.S., we think it’s ‘no.’”
Ambev is the Brazilian brewing company that merged with Anheuser-Busch.
“The way this Bud Light crisis came about a month ago, management’s response to it and the loss of unprecedented volume and brand relevance raises many questions,” Laboy continued. “Why did its US leadership underestimate the risk of pushback given the recent experience of other firms? Is A-B hiring the best people to grow the brands and gauge risk? If Budweiser and Bud Light are iconic American ideas that have long brought consumers together, why did these marketers fail to invite new consumers without alienating the core base of the firm’s largest brand?”
Now a major multinational bank is asking the same questions that conservatives did when Bud Light decided to burn its core customer base.
The financial community is taking note of the incredible damage Bud Light did to its brand with the Mulvaney controversy.
Bud Light has become toxic as a brand to many beer drinkers across the country.
For the last week of April, Bud Light’s sales are 23.4% based on data from NielsenIQ and Bump Williams Consulting.
That’s a bigger drop than previous week, so the boycott shows no sign of letting up.
The radioactive fallout from the Bud Light controversy is spreading to other beer brands owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev.
“It’s not just a Bud Light issue,” Bump Williams told the New York Post. “It’s an Anheuser-Busch portfolio problem now.”
Anheuser-Busch beers Budweiser, Michelob Ultra, Busch Light, and Natural Light all saw sales drop the last week of April.
Budweiser sales were down 11.4% for the week.
“If Bud Light doesn’t fix its trend by the end of this month, it will continue to lose market share because it will lose Memorial Day. That kicks off the summer season,” Williams added. “There has to be a sense of urgency for InBev to correct these trends.”
Anheuser-Busch has an absolute disaster on its hands as damage done by embracing wokeness starts to hit the company’s stock.
